Year 42 of the New Calendar — the ninth year since Zhao Baihui had come to this place.
The world's situation changed slowly. Another three-odd years had passed, and everything was more or less the same as before.
The world was vast, and the great powers were carving it up with gleeful abandon.
Even now, the carving was not yet finished.
After all, when you arrived somewhere new and declared it yours, you needed some kind of proof to back that up.
Either you built something there, or you left soldiers behind — and if all else failed, you could plant a few acres of opium poppies.
Otherwise, if you could simply say "this land is mine" without any evidence, then you might as well claim ownership of the sky itself — no proof required, just hot air.
It was precisely because of this need for evidence that no one could simply draw lines on a map and call it theirs.
You had to actually control the place.
The combined population of the world's great powers at this time was somewhere around seven or eight hundred million.
The vast majority of people had to stay home, which meant that in total, only a few million — ten million at most — could serve as soldiers sent out to occupy the world piece by piece. That took time.
Of course, if a great war broke out, it was entirely possible to mobilize forces several times over — even ten times over — that number.
But with so few men spread across the entire globe, things were genuinely stretched thin.
If you sailed in with a ship full of opium and sold it to the locals, that didn't count as occupation.
If you came ashore and built a small town, that didn't count either.
Only when you had beaten the local people into submission — when your word was law and no one dared defy you — could it truly be called occupation.
If you arrived at a piece of unclaimed land and planted your flag, that wasn't occupation.
Only when you had built a settlement, fenced off the land, and begun cultivating and extracting its resources — that was occupation.
Everyone was busy occupying the world.
Any power with the means to send troops abroad and stake its claims was called a great power.
A new flag had appeared at the table of the great powers: Longcheng.
But Longcheng and Tsarist Russia were the two fools at that table.
Russia sent hardly any troops to the fertile regions of the world, and instead spent its days grinding away at the territories immediately surrounding it, swallowing up one desolate stretch of land after another.
Didn't it find the rich soils of Africa tempting — those lands so abundant that a man could lie beneath a fruit tree and live out his whole life without lifting a finger?
And then there was Longcheng, an even greater fool.
At least the lands around Russia could still be farmed. But Longcheng's idiots actually went and occupied deserts.
Ha! Enough to make anyone die laughing.
If history ran its normal course and people looked back a century or two later, they would finally see clearly who the real fools were.
Everyone laughed at Tsarist Russia while sailing across oceans to seize far-flung territories — only for those territories to eventually declare independence, leaving nothing behind.
But the lands right on your doorstep? If they wanted independence, they'd have to ask your permission first.
See, for reference: Longcheng and the four imperial courts.
As for what lay beneath those desert sands — well, that hardly needed saying.
---
Several years had passed, and the city center of Longcheng had long since transformed beyond recognition.
Longcheng now had thirteen districts and a total population of six hundred thousand.
Longzhong District was the undisputed heart of the city, with a population of one hundred and twenty thousand on its own.
This was where the skyscrapers were most numerous. Nine towers soaring twenty-odd stories into the air left every first-time visitor genuinely awestruck — heads tilted back, gazes fixed upward, reluctant to look away.
The tallest of them all was still claimed by the wealthiest of occupants.
Taoyuan Bank.
This was now the bank's headquarters. Commanding the tallest building in the world, anyone who laid eyes on it could only say: now that's a bank worth respecting.
In the general manager's office on the twenty-eighth floor, Jinxiu lounged lazily against the window, holding a glass of red wine — supposedly good for the complexion — and sipping it slowly.
Several mid-level managers, Cui Yingying among them, held important positions, and were buried in mountains of data and reports.
As the boss, Jinxiu only needed to make the final calls. Compiling and organizing figures was naturally not her concern.
All she had to do was stand by the window, enjoying the highest vantage point in the world, gazing in the direction of the family home in Longbei District, keeping her eyes on the master of the house.
---
The Longcheng Government.
It was no longer called the Longcheng Municipality Central City Hall. The municipal government had been demoted to a subordinate unit.
The Longcheng Government now held the equivalent rank of a provincial ministry.
Jinyi was now the Premier.
Premier of Longcheng!
Drawing a Grade 13 salary and benefits.
The salary was ten times the standard Grade 1 wage.
The Deputy Premier held Grade 12, drawing 8.7 times the standard wage.
A mayor held Grade 11. But Longcheng's own city mayor, Jinwen, had been given an elevated Grade 12 appointment.
By now, the Longcheng Government oversaw several cities of its own.
First among them was Guangxin District — the area outside Longcheng proper that had received the most resource support — which had since been elevated to Guangxin City, with a population of three hundred thousand. Its former district chief, Zhao Mingcheng, had likewise been given an elevated mayoral rank.
Baihu City — its proper name — had Zhao Mingxin as mayor, also with an elevated appointment, and a population of two hundred thousand.
Strictly speaking, Baihu shouldn't have merited the same treatment. Its geography and population were different.
The elevated rank was something he had demanded himself. When it was withheld, he threw a proper tantrum — why should he rank lower than Mingcheng or Jinwen?
Jinyi had no choice and eventually gave him the elevated rank.
To be fair, Baihu City had received far fewer resources than the others, and reaching this scale had been no small feat.
On top of that, its mayor spent most of his time up in the northern capital. When he did travel, it was back to Longcheng — he barely spent a few days a year in Baihu City itself.
Yet when anyone suggested replacing him as mayor, he flatly refused. This was a city he had created, he said. He liked being its mayor.
Zhao Baihui indulged him entirely. Fine, then — though it was the deputy mayor doing all the real work who truly deserved sympathy.
The third and final city was Zhuque City, situated overseas, with a population of one hundred and fifty thousand.
Everything else remained at the district level — including the three imperial capitals, each of which had grown from a modest Taoyuan Street outpost into a full district.
The emperors were all quietly furious. Their imperial capitals — the most august places in their respective realms — and yet there were administrative units belonging to someone else's authority right in the middle of them.
What could they say? It was... thoroughly, infuriatingly, fucking galling!
Taoyuan District had grown somewhat, reaching fifty thousand people, but remained at the county-district level.
Had Longcheng not been built when it was — had development continued here instead — the population now might not even reach two hundred thousand, let alone six hundred thousand.
With only fifty thousand, it was still half short of the minimum threshold Longcheng had set for city status.
Adding it all up roughly, the total population under the Longcheng Government's jurisdiction came to approximately one million eight hundred thousand.
Master Zhao could buy three large trucks every single day.
But there was no need for that now. He simply watched eighteen million flow into the accounts each day, and his private treasury was growing at a breathtaking pace.